Seminar und Lektürekurs Analytic Truth

In this course we will study one of the most central concepts in philosophy since Kant: the concept of analytic truth. Many definitions of the notion have been proposed, but the most common one is that an analytic truth is one that is true merely in virtue of the concepts or meanings involved in conceptualizing/expressing it, e.g., -Vixens are female foxes.” Analytic truth has occupied a central place in most areas of philosophical inquiry, since it held the promise of offering an explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge, and so was hoped to help provide a secure basis for all science and reasoning. However, since W.V.O. Quine's famous attack on the tenability of an analytic-synthetic distinction, many philosophers deemed the notion of the analytic too controversial to be able to carry any explanatory weight. Only in recent years have philosophers again undertaken serious attempts to rehabilitate the notion by carving out a substantive role for it in epistemology and the philosophies of language and of mathematics. Every week we will read, analyze and discuss relevant articles and book excerpts. We begin with a conceptual and historical introduction of the notion through Leibniz and Kant. We then move on, in a historical order, through texts by Frege, the logical positivists, Carnap, Quine, Kripke, the neologicists, and most recently, Boghossian, G. Russell and Williamson. Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft The course does not presuppose any prior knowledge of the subject matter. - Hausarbeit ODER (Referat+Ausarbeitung bzw. Ergebnisprotokoll); je nach Vorgabe der/s Dozierenden LMU München WiSe 1415 W3 Professur für Logik und Sprachphilosophie Hannes Leitgeb